Establishing an accepted form of writing sign language has been an ongoing challenge. Previous attempts have not truly incorporated the plethora of features of the language; therefore, most of the reading of signs were subjective.
Previous systems were not linear and required a significant amount of area on a piece of paper in order to be transcribed. Unique characters that represent poses and movements in American Sign require a conversion program in order to type this method on a computer; prior attempts also required the learner to memorize hundreds of new characters that are unique to the dominance preference.